855 Mayflower Road, Niles, Michigan

years: 2013

Every year, we at Horror Tourers try to expand our range and look for more interesting haunts to explore in places we've never been before. A recent rescheduling of events for the last weekend of September opened up the opportunity to visit the Niles Scream Park in Niles, Michigan. It was an interesting experience, and one that makes for a unique Halloween evening out.

Located only 90 minutes from Tourers home base, Niles Scream Park offers 44 acres of various haunt-related activities. Unlike most haunted houses, which offer one or perhaps two main haunts in one location, Niles offers fiver different haunts in one place, as well as a carnival-like midway featuring games of skill, food, and even movie screenings. What's interesting to us is that Illinois doesn't seem to offer the scream park experience, so this was totally new for everyone involved.

Niles has been around since the early 1970's, and is one of the oldest continually operating haunts in the country. It's located off the beaten path, and once you arrive, you can immediately sense the 70's carnival vibe emanating from it. Visitors have to go through metal detectors upon arrival, and there are NO cameras of any kind allowed within the attractions. As such, the only photo we have is of the sign at the end of the driveway on the way into the haunt. The rules are quite strict, so if don't bother bringing any cameras or recording devices. Lighters, knives, or other sharp objects are also not allowed.

Once inside, visitors purchase tickets for the various haunts. Haunts admissions can be purchased individually, but it's a better value (about a $16 or $17 savings) to purchase them all together. There are five haunts: The Niles Haunted House (the main haunt), Voodoo Bayou, Dark Terrortory Haunted Hayride, Biological Terror and the Field of Screams. Additionally, there is a psychic show, Zendor Presents: Dr. Nefario's Psychic Side Show, but we weren't able to see this as there was only time enough to get in the haunts themselves.

As mentioned, the midway has a very 70's carnival vibe to it, with lights hanging on poles and off of wooden slats, port-a-potties (including one with a surprise ghoul inside), carnival games like target shooting, and several food wagons. The entire surface of the park is covered with what look like some kind of rubber mats - odd, but helpful when trying to navigate uneven ground. Each of the haunts has its own flavor as well, and the 70's vibe was also carried on inside them.

Commentary

MAP

Biological Terror, the first one we visited, has an abandoned lab theme. Most of the rooms featured detailed sets, including lab rooms, a morgue, and even an type of animal housing room, complete with full size skeletal horse that a lab assistant was petting - not something you see every day! Most of the walls were painted wall flats, much like one would see in a high school play, and there were also a number of animated props, lights, bangs and horns, and gusts of air. Again, all of it combined to feel like a funhouse attraction from days past - not scary, but defnitely entertaining with a few good "starts" thrown in. At the end of the lab portion visitors have to walk through a twisty outside maze with several dead ends, leading to an outdoor trail decorated with various ghouls and tombstones, and followed by a long tunnel with strobes and smoke effects. All combined, the haunt took about 10-12 minutes to get through.

Following this, we toured Voodoo Bayou, which was located right next to Biological Terror. The entrance resembled an old bayou shack, which set the mood for the inside of the haunt. Again, like Biological Terror, Voodoo Bayou featured a lot of twists and turns, painted wall flats, noises, horns, lights, and gusts of air. Of course, this time it was all with a voodoo theme. One of the creepiest rooms was a cemetery, similar to ones in New Orleans, with numerous upright crypts as opposed to grave markers. Visitors wound their way around the crypts, and actors popped out of a few of them. In between there were life size skeletal figures dressed in robes. One was never sure until one passed them if they were real or not, adding to the creepiness factor. Other rooms of note included a skeletal Dixieland jazz band, a room with a waterfall, wooden bridge and animated crocodile, and a room with a life size air boat piloted by a hooded skeleton - again, not something you see in your standard haunt. Like Biological Terror, the "exit" of Voodoo Bayou led visitors through a twisty outside maze, back down a trail, and through the strobe/smoke tunnel. Overall, it was also about 10-12 minutes long.

The main house was our next stop. This is Niles' main attraction, and we must say it is certainly worth the $12.00 individual admission price. Upon entering, visitors make their way through a trail populated with tombstones and various figures. Eventually visitors make it to the main house, which, from the outside, looks a lot like the type of haunted house you'd see in a Scooby Doo cartoon - again in line with the whole 70's funhouse feeling we got during our visit. The house itself is huge. Nile's web site says that it takes about seven trips through to see all of the rooms. Although we didn't get the feeling we missed things, we certainly could have, given the size of the haunt. Basically, the main haunt featured much the same type of decorations as Voodoo Bayou and Biological Terror. To be honest, there were so many rooms that we really weren't able to take it all in, but one room in particular was interesting. We entered a large hall populated with several creepy live actors, one of whom led us into a small room with an animated fortune teller. What was interesting is that the head of the fortune teller was some kind of transparent globe, onto which was projected a "face" that talked to us. This face proceeded to change from a cute little girl to some type of demon creature that played Tic-Tac-Toe on itself, complete with bloody "X" and "O" marks. It certainly was not something we had seen before, and we kept waiting for the scary payoff - it came in the form of a hidden door and a live actor, but even without that the room and the fortune teller were creepy enough.

Once throough the main house, visitors wound their way around a large open outside area, including an abandoned greenhouse, a large strobe and smoke filled passageway, over several drawbridges beside waterfalls and ponds, past an abandoned shack on the waterfront, and other scenes. Although low on actors, each scene was well decorated and it was enjoyable just walking through the entire thing. Overall, the haunt took about 25 minutes to get through. ,

Up next was the Field of Screams, a mostly outdoor haunt that led visitors through various passageways that they had to find their way out of. We must confess that this was our least favorite portion of the entire evening. Basically, the majority of the haunt consisted of twisty dark passages that led to dead ends, resulting in lots of backtracking and confusion. There were very few actors and not many props or sets to be seen. The main exception to this was a central area that looked like a circus tent, filled with live actors and with several doors leading from it. Only a couple of these doors actually led out, and visitors had to find the correct ones in order to get to the maze part. We were lucky in that we only got lost a couple of times, so we made our way through relatively quickly. Unfortunately, it wasn't very fun. We were more concerned with getting out than with getting scared or startled by anyone who might pop out (and it turned out there weren't many scares anyway). Some may enjoy this type of "haunt" but for us it really doesn't have much appeal - it has little or no set design, few actors, and not very creative use of space. Overall it was about 25 minutes, which is long for a haunt of any type, but it paled in comparison with the 25 minutes we spent in the main haunt. While that was 25 minutes of quality, this was more 25 minutes of trying to get it over with.

Finally, we took a ride on the Dark Terrortory Haunted Hayride. This turned out to be much more tongue in cheek than any other attraction at the Scream Park. It featured a guide who narrated various scenes along the hayride route, usually with some humorous comment, as if he knew the scenes were not scary at all (which they were not). That is not to say that the scenes weren't entertaining. On the contrary - there were many of them (the hayride lasted about 35 minutes or so), and a lot of them featured large scale props that were animated in some way. Some highlight included a giant snake wrapped around an old shack, a giant drill coming through a kid's mouth, and a towering winged dragon with red eyes who warned people not to disturb his slumber. There were many more, such as a giant saw cutting someone in half, a jack in the box, an auto accident scene with falling light pole, and even a wall of hockey masks with a real "Jason" popping out from behind them. Our favorite scene came in the form of a tractor covered with giant claws and other appendages that drove right up to the hay wagon and kept up alongside for quite some time - it looked like something out of the movie "The Road Warrior" and while not scary, was certainly unusual.

And "unusual" is a good word for the entire hayride. While not scary or intense at all, it was definitely entertaining and in keeping with the funhouse feel described earlier. It was certainly something one could take the whole family on. We enjoyed it particularly because it didn't try to pretend it was scary, but rather ran with the entertainment factor.

If we had to rate the attractions individually, we'd give the main house 5/5, Voodoo Bayou and Biological Terror 4/5, the hayride a 4/5 for entertainment value, and the Field of Screams a 2/5 for its lack of sets, actors, and general scare factor (or, indeed, "fun factor). However, as a whole Niles Scream Park rates a 5/5. The people are welcoming and friendly, it has a lot to do and to enjoy, even if you just get some food and watch the movie that's playing, and the haunts offer a lot of value for a low price.

Overall, the entire Scream Park was more entertaining than scary, although this was certainly not a negative. Although the Niles web site does give the impression that the entire park is one big terror fest, it really isn't. It's more family oriented than anything, with games and movies and food with some fun and enjoyable haunts thrown in. We'd recommend it to anyone who is looking for a fun night out that won't terrify the kids, but will keep them a little spooked. The sets were good in the haunts, the actors were definitely entertaining, and the length of the attractions for the low combo price was an excellent value. We spent $30 for five attractions that took us about 90 minutes to get through. That's a very good value for the money.